SCA Summer Specials

Special Rotation Tour, Ando Gallery (AIC)
Wednesday, June 17th
9:00-10:00 AM

Join your fellow SCA members for a tour of the Ando Gallery — the first American project of the eminent Japanese architect. A new presentation of work, drawn from the departments of Prints & Drawings and Arts of Asia, considers the relationship between geopolitical and psychological conflict, and how, in the wake of tragedy, we may perceive ourselves and others differently. In this space, consider how unity — of purpose, of identity — can be revitalizing, but also divisive. Proposing new contexts for contemporary drawing, this presentation expands notions of harmony and tradition in Asian art.

Martin Wong Exhibition Tour at Wrightwood 659
Wednesday, June 24th
6:00-7:30 PM

Martin Wong: Chinatown USA is the first US monographic museum exhibition since 2017 of Chinese American artist Martin Wong (1946–1999). The exhibition features over 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photographs illustrating Wong’s idiosyncratic urban realism, his innovative approach to technique and form, his rich surfaces, and the inspiration he took from astrology, architecture, and various modes of language. Curated by Yasufumi Nakamori, PhD, with Ashley Janke, Assistant Curator, Wrightwood 659, the exhibition is presented by Halsted A&A Foundation.

Happy Hour and Exhibition Tour at the Arts Club of Chicago
Monday, July 20th
6:00-8:00 PM

Join for a tour of the exhibition Oren Pinhassi: Into Your Arm’s Length, led by Janine Mileaf, Executive Director and Chief Curator at The Arts Club of Chicago. Pinhassi has an important installation of new work at The Arts Club, the artist’s first solo exhibition in Chicago, featuring a series of figural and architectural pieces that occupy the gallery in an encompassing configuration. The exhibition aims to trigger physical engagements with desire and fragility.

Celeste Rapone Studio Visit
Wednesday, September 2nd
6:00-7:30 PM

Celeste Rapone's compositions are spatially complex and require time to unpack – details (often hilarious references to popular or mass cultural objects and their attendant packaging) jostle with general forms (bodies, landscape, architecture) in ways that surprise and delight the careful viewer. Rapone paints alla prima, applying her materials directly, with no preparatory sketches, so the metaphor of over-preparedness that permeates these scenes is, for her, in an inverse relationship to her method of image-making, which is highly improvisatory and intuitive, starting with very basic color or shape ideas and building from that. She's thinking about painting strategies, history painting, the big picture in all senses. "What I was interested in with a comparison to chess is how in painting you make a series of choices and can't be sure how they'll unfold or respond to one another," says Rapone. "You keep going and try to enter from different angles until something opens up. And many times you lose. But then you get to try over and over and over again."